In Front | Theodoret and Ezekiel’s River

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Theodoret and Ezekiel’s River

See the table below for a more complete list of symbolism Theodoret gleaned from Ezekiel.

Detail	Symbolism
River	The grace of Christ
River’s increase	The growth of the church
Fourfold	The four evangelists
Depth of the last sounding	The relative depth of the last gospel
Fruit of the trees	Good works
Foliage	The inner joy of good works
Course from Jerusalem through Galilee to the desert and on to the Dead Sea	Course of the gospel across Galilee to civilized pagans and barbarians
The freshening power of the stream’s water	The sanctification of the myths and fables of pagans
The fish and fishermen	Souls and “fishers of men”

As we’ve stressed, Ezekiel is a tough book to interpret. The imagery is so rich that it’s easy to get wrapped up in overly detailed speculation about its meaning. This isn’t to say that Theodoret’s interpretation has no value; his parallels do provide meaningful correlation between the two different contexts. But they are hardly the only or the best possibilities. We would do just as well to focus on Ezekiel’s priestly emphasis on holiness and sharing space with God, which we’ll continue to discuss in the next lesson.

Source: Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48, 1998, pp. 696-700.